The technology behind pumped hydro is not new — a facility was opened in the 1970s at the Tumut 3 Power Station at Talbingo in New South Wales.

Pumped hydro is also widespread in Europe, especially in the alpine parts of Italy, Germany and France, and in Scandinavian countries like Norway. It is also widely used in Japan and the United States.

Professor Blakers said as investment in renewable sources of energy like wind and solar increases in Australia, the need for pumped hydro storage would grow.

"We have so little solar and wind in the system at the moment that we don't need the storage," he said.

"Maybe now South Australia, at 50 per cent wind and solar PV, is just getting to the stage where it does need either strong interconnection or a pumped hydro or both.

"But the other states will catch up and will be at the 50 per cent level by the early 2020s I think, so they also need to start planning with pumped hydro now."

'Australia could be fully electrified within two decades'

For the report, Professor Blakers, Dr Stocks and their colleagues looked closely at tens of thousands of sites Australia-wide.

They found the greatest density of pumped hydro storage sites was in New South Wales, where they estimated there was potential to build 29,000 gigawatt hours' worth of storage capacity across 8,600 sites.

In Victoria they estimated there were 4,400 potentially suitable sites capable of storing 11,000 gigawatt hours' capacity, while Tasmania could theoretically support 2,050 sites, adding 6,000 gigawatt hours' of storage.

"All the way from North Queensland down to near Melbourne has thousands and thousands of sites."

Professor Blakers said if pumped hydro storage facilities were built at just a handful of sites spread out nationwide, Australia could run on renewables alone.

"Pumped hydro, high-voltage DC interconnectors between the states, solar photovoltaics, wind, batteries and demand management can do the whole job," he said.

"Not just the whole job for electricity, but the whole job for energy — electrify land transport, electrify heating and cooling and you could make 75 per cent cuts in Australia's greenhouse gas emissions.

"And I think this is going to happen over the next 15 or 20 years."

Major expansion of hydro storage: Frydenberg

The ANU researchers' work was funded by a $500,000 grant made by the Federal Government's Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA).